GENERAL SIGNS OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REVOLT

Peasant revolts of a sporadic character are to be met with throughout the Middle Ages even in their halcyon days. Some of these, like the Jacquerie in France and the revolt associated with the name of Wat Tyler in England, were of a serious and more or less extended character. But most of them were purely local and of no significance, apart from temporary and passing circumstances. By the last quarter of the fifteenth century, however, peasant risings had become increasingly numerous and their avowed aims much more definite and far-reaching than, as a rule, were those of an earlier date. In saying this we are referring to those revolts which were directly initiated by the peasantry, the serfs, and the villeins of the time, and which had as their main object the direct amelioration of the peasant’s lot. Movements of a primarily religious character were, of course, of a somewhat different nature, but the tendency was increasingly, as we approach the period of the Reformation, for the two currents to merge one in the other. The echoes of the Hussite movement in Bavaria at the beginning of the century spread far and wide throughout Central Europe, and had by no means spent their force as the century drew towards its close.

From this time forward recurrent indications of social revolt with a strong religious colouring, or a religious revolt with a strong social colouring, became chronic in the Germanic lands and those adjacent thereto. As an example may be taken the movement of Hans Boheim, of Niklashausen, in the diocese of Wuerzburg, in Franconia, in 1476, and which is regarded by some historians as the first of the movements leading directly up to those of the Lutheran Reformation. Hans claimed a divine mission for preaching the gospel to the common man. Hans preached asceticism and claimed Niklashausen as a place of pilgrimage for a new worship of the Virgin. There was little in this to alarm the authorities till Hans announced that the Queen of Heaven had revealed to him that there was to be no lay or spiritual authority, but that all men should be brothers, earning their bread by the sweat of their brows, paying no more imposts or dues, holding land in common, and sharing alike in all things. The movement went on for some months, spreading rapidly in the neighbouring territories. At last Hans was seized by armed men while asleep and hurried to Wuerzburg. The affair caused immense commotion, and by the Sunday following, it is stated, 34,000 armed peasants assembled at Niklashausen. Led by a decayed knight and his son, 16,000 of them marched to Wuerzburg, demanding their prophet at the gate of the bishop’s castle. By promises and cajolery, they were induced to disperse by the prince-bishop, who, as soon as he saw they were returning home in straggling parties, treacherously sent a body of his knights after them, killing some and taking others prisoners. Two of the ringleaders were beheaded outside the castle, and at the same time the prophet Hans Boheim was burnt to ashes. Thus ended a typical religio-social peasant revolt of the half-century preceding the great Reformation movement.

In 1491 the oppressed and plundered villeins of Kempten revolted, but the movement was quelled by the Emperor himself after a compromise. A great rising took place in Elsass (Alsace) in 1493 among the feudatories of the Bishop of Strassburg, with the usual object of freedom for the “common man,” abolition of feudal exactions, Church reformation, etc. This movement is interesting, as having first received the name of the Bundschuh. It was decided that as the knight was distinguished by his spurs, so the peasant should have as his device the common shoe of his class, laced from the ankle through to the knee by leathern thongs, and the banner whereon this emblem was depicted was accordingly made. The movement was, however, betrayed and mercilessly crushed by the neighbouring knighthood. A few years later a similar movement, also having the Bundschuh for its device, took place in the regions of the Upper and Middle Rhine. This movement created a panic among all the privileged classes, from the Emperor down to the knight. The situation was discussed in no less than three separate assemblies of the States. It was, however, eventually suppressed for the time being. A few years later, in 1512, it again burst forth under the leadership of an active adherent of the former movement, one Joss Fritz, in Baden, at the village of Lehen, near the town of Freiburg. The organization in this case, besides being widespread, was exceedingly good, and the movement was nearly successful when at the last moment it was betrayed. Even in Switzerland there were peasant risings in the early years of the sixteenth century. About the same time the duchy of Wuertemberg was convulsed by a movement which took the name of the “Poor Conrad.” Its object was the freeing of the “common man” from feudal services and dues and the abolition of seignorial rights over the land, etc. But here again the movement was suppressed by Duke Ulrich and his knights. Another rising took place in Baden in 1517. Three years previously, in 1514, occurred the great Hungarian peasant rebellion under George Daze. Under the able leadership of the latter the peasants had some not inconsiderable initial successes, but this movement also, after some weeks, was cruelly suppressed. About the same time, too, occurred various insurrectionary peasant movements in the Styrian and Carinthian alpine districts. Similar movements to those referred to were also going on during those early years of the fifteenth century in other parts of Europe, but these, of course, do not concern us.

The deep-reaching importance and effective spread of such movements was infinitely greater in the Middle Ages than in modern times. The same phenomenon presents itself to-day in backward and semi-barbaric communities. At first sight one is inclined to think that there has been no period in the world’s history when it was so easy to stir up a population as the present, with our newspapers, our telegraphs, our aeroplane, our postal arrangements, and our railways. But this is just one of those superficial notions that are not confirmed by history. We are similarly apt to think that there was no age in which travel was so widespread and formed so great a part of the education of mankind as at present. There could be no greater mistake. The true age of travelling was the close of the Middle Ages, or what is known as the Renaissance period. The man of learning, then just differentiated from the ecclesiastic, spent the greater part of his life in earning his intellectual wares from Court to Court and from University to University, just as the merchant personally carried his goods from city to city in an age in which commercial correspondence, bill-brokers, and the varied forms of modern business were but in embryo. It was then that travel really meant education, the acquirement of thorough and intimate knowledge of diverse manners and customs. Travel was then not a pastime, but a serious element in life.

In the same way the spread of a political or social movement was at least as rapid then as now, and far more penetrating. The methods were, of course, vastly different from the present; but the human material to be dealt with was far easier to mould, and kept its shape much more readily when moulded, than is the case nowadays. The appearance of a religious or political teacher in a village or small town of the Middle Ages was an event which keenly excited the interest of the inhabitants. It struck across the path of their daily life, leaving behind it a track hardly conceivable to-day. For one of the salient symptoms of the change which has taken place since that time is the disappearance of local centres of activity and the transference of the intensity of life to a few large towns. In the Middle Ages every town, small no less than large, was a more or less self-sufficing organism, intellectually and industrially, and was not essentially dependent on the outside world for its social sustenance. This was especially the case in Central Europe, where communication was much more imperfect and dangerous than in Italy, France, or England. In a society without newspapers, without easy communication with the rest of the world, where the vast majority could neither read nor write, where books were rare and costly, and accessible only to the privileged few, a new idea bursting upon one of these communities was eagerly welcomed, discussed in the council chamber of the town, in the hall of the castle, in the refectory of the monastery, at the social board of the burgess, in the workroom, and, did it but touch his interests, in the hut of the peasant. It was canvassed, too, at church festivals (Kirchweihe), the only regular occasion on which the inhabitants of various localities came together. In the absence of all other distraction, men thought it out in all the bearings which their limited intellectual horizon permitted. If calculated in any way to appeal to them it soon struck root, and became a part of their very nature, a matter for which, if occasion were, they were prepared to sacrifice goods, liberty, and even life itself. In the present day a new idea is comparatively slow in taking root. Amid the myriad distractions of modern life, perpetually chasing one another, there is no time for any one thought, however wide-reaching in its bearings, to take a firm hold. In order that it should do so in the modern mind, it must be again and again borne in upon this not always too receptive intellectual substance. People require to read of it day after day in their newspapers, or to hear it preached from countless platforms, before any serious effect is created. In the simple life of former ages it was not so.

The mode of transmitting intelligence, especially such as was connected with the stirring up of political and religious movements, was in those days of a nature of which we have now little conception. The sort of thing in vogue then may be compared to the methods adopted in India to prepare the Mutiny of 1857, when the mysterious cake was passed from village to village, signifying that the moment had come for the outbreak. The sense of esprit de corps and of that kind of honour most intimately associated with it, it must also be remembered, was infinitely keener in ruder states of society than under a high civilization. The growth of civilization, as implying the disruption of the groups in which the individual is merged under more primitive conditions, and his isolation as an autonomous unit having vague and very elastic moral duties to his “country” or to mankind at large, but none towards any definite and proximate social whole, necessarily destroys that communal spirit which prevails in the former case. This is one of the striking truths which the history of these peasant risings illustrates in various ways and brings vividly home to us.